“Game for Cats” Developers Stop In-App Purrrchases

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Hand-scanning puts an end to cat hack attack.

By Jon Fox

Humans aren’t the only ones who love Apple’s iPad. With an eye for how intently cats will stalk laser-points and toy mice, one intrepid app design firm set out to make the purrrfect iOS game for felines (“NOT HUMANS,” their website asserts).

The Fruit Ninja-style game snowballed into a big success story, and anyone who got tired of watching their cat pounce on a virtual laser-pointer could unlock a virtual mouse as an in-app upgrade. The developers covered their tails with a claws clause in their terms of use, explaining that, you know, cats have claws.

But there was one catch. Hiccup, the almost too-perfectly named app development company behind “Game for Cats,” began receiving complaints from iPad owners who thought their pets were initializing the in-app purchases without their consent.

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I'm not sure a cat could make this purchase.

The development firm wasn’t convinced. “I'm not sure a cat could make this purchase,” Hiccup’s Nate Murray told IGN, “you have to enter your password before buying DLC.” While they haven’t issued refunds, Hiccup’s staff did land on its feet.

A recent update to the app won’t let you pawse the game, much less buy additional content, without authenticating yourself as a human by scanning your hand.

What with in-app purchases requiring a password, the hand-scanning feature was mostly a gesture of good faith, but Murray told us designing it was tricky. “I call this the Game-For-Cats-Law-of-Touch-Screen-UI: any UI feature that is too hard for a cat is too hard for your average iPad user.” The hand-scanning step, which really just requires keeping four points of contact still for a couple seconds, is “more-or-less cat-proof.”

As yet, none of the cat-burglars in question has been implicated in this week’s iOS in-app hacking exploits, but we’ll keep you posted. Are your pets devious enough to rack up iTunes charges? Let us know in the comments.